PmWiki | EAO / Chapter6

(:nl:)Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 '+'''Chapter 6: Ethics'''+' ''The rusty computer syndrome'' Free Software and Human Rights Digital Rights Software and the right to development Software and the right to education Virtue the 'commons' and all things computer The ethic of freedom Comment on Chapter 6

GianMarco Schiesaro is an Italian (1969) with extensive global experience. If not a digital native, he is an excellent example of a thoroughly enculturated digital immigrant! GianMarco has a degree in Electronic Engineering and then subsequently specialised in topics to do with Development Cooperation and Computer Mediated Communication. For a number of years he has worked in the world of international cooperation with VIS (''Volontariato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo'') in e-learning projects for developing countries. GianMarco is also director of the Training Centre for Human Development in Rome and lectures in the Masters in Education for Peace program at the Università di Roma Tre. I will be drawing on GianMarco's insights for this chapter, with not only his permission but also his encouragement. We first cooperated in preparation for the International Congress on Free and Open Source Software and the Democratization of Knowledge held in Quito in October 2008.

GianMarco's first book, dealing with technology in the development debate, is entitled 'The Rusty Computer Syndrome', (2003, published by SEI, Turin, in Italian, under the title ''La sindrome del computer arruginato''). GianMarco uses this metaphor to try to understand the effect of new technologies in under-developed nations, and the often sterile efforts to 'parachute' new technology into places where the infrastructure and competence to deal with it are simply not adequate or even non-existent. There are a host of ethical questions raised here, including even a very practical one if we take the metaphor at face value – what happens in places where second-hand computers are brought in by their thousands, then dumped for a variety of reasons, in nations where there is no land-fill policy, no way of ensuring protection from corrosive materials?

The fundamental ethical principle, in any discussion of Information and Communication Technologies, of digital culture, and for that matter of development, is that the human person and the human community are their end and measure. The same ethical principle applies to cyberspace, which cannot be regarded as if it is autonomous, separate from society, as it also applies to the vast array of human knowledge available now to human beings who have access to it via the Internet. We can add the question of access to the long list of ethical questions.

Free Software and Human Rights

(:nl:)